By Tim Sanders

Let’s say that you are one of the many readers who’s written to me, expressing a deep, burning desire to become a humor columnist. Let’s say that you are in need of advice from a trained professional. Okay, so nobody’s ever really written to me expressing a deep, burning desire to write humor columns. There was a reader who e-mailed me once, expressing a deep, burning desire to place an ad for a single, white female with her own satellite dish in the paper’s classified section, but I believe he was inebriated at the time. Regardless, if you want to write a humor column and are still buying this premise, here are some things you should know about humor:

1. Jokes are usually not funny in the traditional humor column format. There are three primary reasons for this. For one thing, many of the funniest jokes contain expletives which you would have to delete in a newspaper column. As in: "‘[S-word],’ said the bartender. ‘Why did your monkey stick that cherry up his [B-word]?’" That isn’t funny, only annoying. For another, when telling a joke, you can tailor your joke to your audience. When writing a joke, you have no idea into whose hands your written joke will fall. There are some people out there in whose hands a perfectly innocent joke about a priest, a rabbi, a Baptist preacher, and a carnival contortionist could become a lethal weapon. Thirdly, often the most important component of a joke is timing. One must know when to pause dramatically, and when to emphasize certain words. On the written page, these effects can only be achieved by using those little dot things we professionals call ellipses (...), by the use of italics (eye-talicks), and of course by capitalization (CAPITALIZATION). Many professional humor columnists have been severely injured due to careless use of those three literary devices.

2. Dialogue is an integral part of the humor column, yet few writers can manage dialogue well. Consider the following lines from Shakespeare’s immortal Halloween comedy, ‘Macbeth’:
 

LADY MACBETH: "Yet here’s a stain."

DOCTOR: "Hark, she speaks. ‘Tis a dark blot upon the carpet, alas."

LADY MACBETH: "Out, damn’d Spot! Out, I say!"

SPOT: "ARF!"

HAMLET: "To be or not to be, that is–DANG, I stepped in something!"

LADY MACBETH: “Thee doth be in the wrong play, forsooth!"

SPOT: "ARF!”
 

Yes, even Shakespeare had trouble with dialogue, and he was a bard. If you are uncomfortable with dialogue, you might want to consider writing political speeches instead of humor columns.

3. Do not embellish your narrative with excessive punctuation and self-congratulatory comments. Keep it simple.

NOT FUNNY: Presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich said he’d seen a fiery red UFO at a recent Democratic debate, but later admitted it was only a tomato. HAHAHA!!!!! SNARK, SNARK!! LOL. :)

FUNNY: Presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich.

4. Research is essential to good humor.

Without exhaustive research, for example, this professional humor columnist would never have found a fascinating column by Bill Nemitz in the November 18th edition of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. In this column we learned that after a spot inspection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Warren Knight, owner of the Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook, Maine, was told he was not in compliance with federal regulations. The regulations clearly stated that since eggs are considered an allergen, they must be listed as an ingredient in Smiling Hill Farm’s bottled egg nog. Knight told the inspector that he was fairly confident that the words "egg nog" on the bottle caps should convince consumers that their nog had egg in it, but that was not sufficient.

"The FDA notified the Maine Department of Agriculture that all Smiling Hill egg nog on store shelves – about 400 gallons at that point – had to be recalled to protect people with egg allergies who don’t know there’s egg in egg nog."

Eventually the recall was averted, but only after "Knight agreed to have his label redesigned to include the ingredients and, in the meantime, affix a warning label to every bottle of egg nog that leaves his farm."

Remember, when all else fails, you can always rely on government bureaucracy at the federal, state, or local level to provide you with something really goofy. For example, you might want to research the details of that special task force in Fort Collins, Colorado, which proposed a ban on red and green lights in downtown holiday decorations on city buildings this year because those festive colors are ... well, too religious. (Relax, the city council did vote the proposal down on Nov. 20.)

As you can see, stories like those sort of write themselves. All you have to do is the research.

5. Make sure that your work is original. I’ve written about 1,200 of these columns over the years, and while I’ve done my best to avoid using material from other writers, there have still been those rare occasions where something slips into one of my columns which, unbeknownst to me, was mentioned in a very similar manner by someone else. This was called to my attention in 1992, when I wrote a column about my disastrous attempt to noodle a huge yellow catfish from a hollow log submerged in Weiss Lake using only my bare hands and an electronic stun gun, and began that column with the line, "Call me Ishmael."

And in a similar vein, avoid repetition. I reiterate, do not repeat yourself. Several months ago I’d come up with what I thought was an extremely original idea which concerned an elderly gentleman, ear wax, a bobby pin, two Crayolas, and a subsequent emergency room visit. Sadly, while going through my old ear wax files, I found that I’d already written that very column several years earlier, and had completely forgotten it. I’d unintentionally stolen material from myself. That is not good.

I hope some of you out there will take this advice to heart. All I can do is offer it. After all, as renowned humorist Dennis Kucinich himself once said, "You can lead a horse to water, but when it comes to methane emissions and carbon hoof prints, there’s really no advantage to a wet horse.